Spellbook
Every Wizard, at the start of the game, is in possession of a library of tomes, containing secrets of magic -- if only the Wizard can decode them. The Realm forms the basis of this knowledge, and all 14 of its spells can be deciphered by any Wizard; but most practitioners of magic also have one or more Spellbooks from other magical Realms. It is from these libraries that Wizards do all of their . While it is possible to learn individual spells from other sources, only the spells in Spellbooks can ever be researched. Each of these tomes is bound with the mark of its Realm, as shown above. Once contacted, the "Bookshelf" of rival Wizards can be viewed by right-clicking on their profile gem on the Magic Screen. The player's own books are, in turn, visible when looking in the Mirror, accessible from either the Info menu, or by pressing F9, in the main game view. Selection Above the Intro difficulty, a game of Master of Magic opens by offering the player 11 "picks" by which to make a selection of Spellbooks and Retorts. Pursuant to this, a Wizard can begin the game with up to 11 Spellbooks. Owning both and ranks is forbidden, and there is no such thing as an Spellbook; but apart from that, anything goes. On the Intro difficulty, the player can only select from the default profiles instead, foregoing customization for the sake of simplicity. Most of these hold either 10 books of a single color, or 5 each of two different ones. Acquisition The only way to acquire more Spellbooks during the campaign is to sack Encounter Zones of extreme power. These might offer rewards of 1 or 2 Specials, which will turn into either a Spellbook or a Retort when looted. The article on Treasure describes in more detail the procedural generation of Specials, and the table on the right also highlights the possible colors that may be found in each type of Encounter Zone. A Wizard may hold no more than 13 Spellbooks and 6 Retorts at any time however, ranging effectively between 19 and 26 "picks" total (13 picks worth of books, and 6-13 picks worth of skills). Typically, when a Spellbook is found, a randomly-chosen group of Unknown spells instantly become Learnable (see below), commensurate with getting the next rank in a color. This process should normally stop when acquiring the 10th book in any given Realm, at which point all of its spells should be available for . Unfortunately, due to a discrepancy between the amount of spells contained in Spellbooks selected at the start of the game versus those found later, this may not actually be the case in the official game. In fact, this may also prevent the player from finding further books of certain colors, as described in the Known Bugs section below. Effects * Each Spellbook on the shelf contributes to the Wizard at their Fortress. This applies regardless of how the book was acquired. * Each Spellbook selected at the start of the game adds 2 points to the Wizard's initial Spell Casting Skill. However, finding them later does not contribute any more. * Each Spellbook contains a set amount of spells (selected at random) from set Rarities that can be , illustrated in the table below. * Taken at the start of the game, each Spellbook after the first also allows the player to choose an additional Common Spell to already be Known when the game begins. An 11th book will instead allow the selection of two Uncommon Spells and one Rare Spell (totals highlighted in green in the table), as all Common ones are already included automatically. * Every Spellbook above the 7th grants a cumulative +10% increase to the invested into deciphering the spells of this Realm, and an also cumulative -10% reduction to their Casting Costs. * Spellbooks taken at the start of the game also have an impact on Diplomacy, representing the fact that Wizards with similar views tend to get along better, while those with different ideals are more prone to escalate to hostility. The individual Realm articles provide more details on the exact effect of each color on the Starting Relations. : This table conforms to Master of Magic v1.31. In earlier versions of the game, distribution leaned more towards higher-rarity guarantees, and allowed picking Very Rare spells when possessing a large number of Spellbooks. However, these spells were not automatically Known as they are in the latest version. Instead, they were marked as Learnable at the beginning, rather than having to rely on the random number generator for acquiring them. Spellbooks As Requirements Spellbook ranks also serve as requirements for trading and finding spells, selecting some Retorts at the start of the game, and creating Magical Items with certain enchantments. In the official game, they are also required to find many of the game's predefined Items in Treasure, but this is clearly a bug (even if the concept was valid, the implementation is erroneous), and has been removed entirely in the unofficial patches. Spells To obtain any spell besides ones, a Wizard must possess at least a certain amount of Spellbooks from the Realm that the spell belongs to. The exact amount depends on the spell's Rarity: Common Spells and Uncommon Spells can be acquired with only a single book, but Rare Spells need two, and Very Rare Spells require three. This is true for both trading spells with other Wizards, finding them in Treasure, or looting them while conquering the Fortress of a rival. Generally, this also holds for , with one exception. Due to a discrepancy in the game's code, if the second Spellbook of a given Realm is found in an Encounter Zone (as opposed to being selected at the start), the game will randomly make a single Very Rare Spell from this Realm Learnable. This means that it can eventually be researched, despite the fact that obtaining it any other way would be impossible unless a third Spellbook of the same color is acquired first. Other Very Rare Spells from this Realm may not be learned otherwise either, which may be somewhat confusing. This is most likely a bug left over from the earlier versions of the game, and is corrected in the Unofficial Patch 1.50. Starting Retorts Spellbooks are also needed to take advanced Retorts at the beginning of the game. However, these requirements only apply when creating the Wizard, and will be ignored for Retorts found in Treasure during the campaign. Item Powers Finally, Spellbook ranks are needed to imbue certain spell-like effects when creating Magical Items: Item Treasure As mentioned above, in the latest official game version, Spellbook ranks are also required to find over half of the pre-generated Magical Items in Treasure, or be awarded them through a random Event. Of the 250 pre-fab items, 143 require ranks, possibly in multiple Realms, and typically not in the color associated with the item's powers (see above). A full list of these, with their prerequisites, is located here, along with a more in-depth explanation of the bug that results in this state of affairs. The requirements for Treasure are removed in Insecticide, while The Gift Event is corrected in the Unofficial Patch 1.50. Known Bugs Apart from the Item Treasure bug described above, there are also two more bugs associated with Spellbooks in the original game. The first one has to do with the amount of spells of each Rarity that are made Learnable by a given book rank. As mentioned already, and highlighted in the spell amounts table above, the second and tenth book of any Realm will award a different amount Very Rare Spells when found as Treasure, than if selected from the starting "picks". For the second book, this is actually beneficial for the player, as finding this in an Encounter Zone makes available a single (random) Very Rare Spell, which otherwise can not be acquired with only 2 Spellbooks. On the other hand, starting the game with 10 (or more) books in any Realm allows the player to research every spell in that Realm. In contrast, if the 10th Spellbook comes from Treasure, it will only make a single Very Rare Spell Learnable. This means that even if the player collects all of the books from Encounters, they will still be one Very Rare short of acquiring all of the spells. More commonly though, they will be missing two, as this is the actual difference between picking this book at the start of the game, and finding it in Treasure. Unfortunately, this in turn can trigger the second bug. As a result of an incomplete error check in the routine that translates found Spellbooks into Learnable spells, finding any book that a player already has more than 10 of, will turn it into a book, if the Wizard has any Unknown Very Rare Spells of that Realm when looting the book. Naturally, this can be avoided by acquiring the missing spells through trading, Treasure, or conquering rivals; but that only becomes any reliable when the majority of the Learnable are already researched. This may be much later than finding a 12th Spellbook when focusing on collecting a single color. In addition, Wizards will never find any Very Rare Spell in the 12th Spellbook either (noone finds any spells in the 11th), although the last, 13th book may rectify this and award all remaining spells. For the other Realms, at least one Very Rare Spell will be made Learnable by the last two books, even if they are converted into Spellbooks. Thus, all spells can still be collected, but the and, more importantly, the Casting Cost benefits will be lost. This has a large impact on strategies aiming for zero-cost Summoning Spells, as both and Wizards have to work around this bug if they want to start the game with 9 Spellbooks (taking Conjurer and the respective Realm Mastery). These bugs are both still present in Insecticide, but are fixed in the Unofficial Patch 1.50, which brings the amount of spells per book found in Treasure strictly in line with what would be available at the beginning of the game. On a side note though, this also removes the random Very Rare Spell from the second Spellbook. The individual patch that corrects these issues is W170FIX.TXT, and it is compatible with both v1.31 and v1.40n, in a way that it can be applied as a standalone fix without changing anything else. This can be used to hotfix a campaign already in progress without having to restart the game from scratch, although missing spells will not be made Learnable by books above 10 in this case. Category:Magic